“Damn you, Bard, now you have one to match your paxman, and you’re no better than he is!”
His helpless frustration turned to anger; he grabbed her hands roughly, holding them both in one of his own.
“Stop it, Carlie! I don’t want to hurt you, you are forcing me to hurt you!”
“You always justify yourself, don’t you?” she flared at him, raging. “Why should I make this easy for you?”
“Carlie, there’s no way you can talk me, or trick me, or persuade me out of this. I am going to have you and that is all there is to it, and while I don’t want to hurt you, I’ll do whatever I have to to keep you quiet. I let you escape me before and all my troubles came from that. If Geremy hadn’t come interfering, that Festival, you’d be my wife and we’d have lived happy all these years; Beltran would still be alive—”
“Do you dare to blame me for that?”
“I blame you for everything that has happened to me since I let you refuse me,” he said, angry now, “but I am willing still to take you as my wife, and this is your chance to make amends!”
“Amends? You must be quite mad, Bard!”
“You owe me this, at least! Now if you will be sensible and not straggle so foolishly, it could be as pleasant for you as for me, and that’s the way I’d rather have it. But whether or no, I’m stronger than you are, and if you’re sensible you’ll know there’s no use whatever in fighting me. Here—” He pulled at her shawl. “Let’s have these clothes off.”
“No!” Her voice was frantic; she backed away in terror. Bard set his teeth. If the little cat was set on fighting, he’d stop her now. He pulled off the shawl and flung it away, grabbed the top of her tunic and tore it down all the way, pulling off the torn fabric and hurling it to the floor. The undertunic followed, the thin cloth tearing down quickly. Her nails left scratches on his hands, and she beat and battered at his face, but he ignored her. He lifted her, still struggling, and dumped her into the center of the bed, lowered himself beside her. She kicked him, and he struck her, brutally, with his open hand. She cowered away, in her thin chemise, and began to cry.
“Carlie, my sweetheart, my love, I don’t want to hurt you, there’s no sense in fighting me.” He tried to take her close in his arms, but she turned her head away and wept, twisting her head from his searching mouth. Infuriated by her crying, when he intended so much tenderness, he slapped her again, hard, and she stopped fighting, and lay quiet, tears pouring down her face. Damn her! It could have been so good for both of them! Why had she forced him to do this?
Enraged—and simultaneously aroused—by the way in which she was spoiling the moment he had dreamed of for years, he flung himself on her and pulled up her chemise, roughly parting her legs with his hand. She arched her body and tried to throw him off, but he pressed her roughly down. She gasped and lay still, shrinking away, sobbing. She did not struggle again, though he knew he was hurting her; he saw her teeth clamp hard in her lower lip and saw flecks of blood there. He tried to bend and kiss it away, but she jerked her head roughly aside, rigid as a corpse in his arms, except for the tears still flooding down her face as if only they were alive.
“Lord General—” a voice interrupted Paul as he strode along the hall. For a moment he thought Bard had suddenly turned up in the hallway nearby, then realized that he was being addressed. So he had come to look that much like Bard! He was about to reveal his identity, then realized that no one was supposed to know that Paolo Harryl and Bard were so much alike. He scrabbled swiftly in his mind for memory of the man’s name.
“Lerrys.”
The man’s eyes rose to the scratch on Paul’s face. “You look like you’ve been fighting with one of those bitches in red,” he said, chuckling. “I hope you tore her earrings right out of their holes, sir.” In casta the phrase assumed a slight double entendre, and Paul, though the joke was a little less sophisticated than he’d have found funny in his own world, laughed companionably and didn’t answer, except with a knowing grin.
“I heard they’d all deserted, sir. Going to punish them, or outlaw them, or anything? Might give the troops some fun, and it would teach women to stay in their proper place.”
Paul shook his head. “Falcons don’t fly after cagebirds. Let them go, and good riddance to them,” he said, and went on to his own rooms, thoughtfully. As he had foreseen, Melisendra was waiting for him.
She put up her arms and kissed him, and he realized that all the way back from the Island of Silence, he had been looking forward to this moment. What had happened to him that a woman could get under his skin that way?
“How is Erlend?”
“Well enough, though I wish we could send him to safety in the country,” she said, “or better, in the Tower. Although—” she paled, “after what befell Hali, I am not sure there is any safety in the Tower, or anywhere else in this land.”
“Send him to the country, if you will,” Paul said. “I am sure Bard will not object; but why do you think he would not be safe here, Melisendra?”
“I have Aldaran blood,” she said, hesitating, “and there is the laran of precognition in that line. It is not reliable—I cannot always control it. But sometimes… It may be only my fear, but I have seen fire, fire in this place, and once when I looked at King Alaric I saw his face surrounded in flame…”
“Oh, dearest!” Paul held her close, realizing suddenly that if anything should happen to her, nothing would be left in this world or any other that could contain light of happiness for him. What had happened to him?
She raised her soft hand to touch the scratch on his face.
“How did you get this? It looks too small for a battle wound.”
“And it is not,” Paul said, “for I got it from a woman.”
She smiled and said, “I never inquire what a man chooses to do when he is on campaign. I imagine you have had enough women, but can’t you find willing ones? I shouldn’t think, my handsome one, that anyone would refuse you.”
Paul felt himself blushing, remembering the beautiful redheaded wench he and Bard had shared. God knows she had been willing enough. But she had been, at first, only comfort for the knowledge that Melisendra was not there, and later, an excuse for confrontation with Bard. “Such women as I take are willing, my love,” he said, wondering why he bothered to explain this—what in the world had come over him in the last few months? “This was a captive, a woman Bard ordered me to bring to him.”
That was it. I resented getting a woman for him. I’m not his damned pimp! Angrily, he identified the cause of his anger, and Melisendra, dropping into rapport with him, said, “I’m surprised at that. There are few enough women to refuse Bard. Although the Princess Carlina, I am told, fled the court, there had been some talk of marrying them when they were boy and girl.” And as again she followed his thought, her small hands flew to her mouth and she stared at him.
“Carlina, in the name of the Goddess! He sent you—to incur the wrath of Avarra, to shift the curse to you.”
“I don’t think that was all his reason,” Paul said, and explained that he was immune to the spells laid on the Island of Silence.
She listened, troubled, shaking her head in despair. “Any man who sets foot on the Holy Isle must die…”
“First of all,” Paul said, “I’m not afraid of your Goddess. I told Carlina that. And she’s his wife—”
Melisendra shook her head. “No, the Goddess has claimed her. Perhaps it is through her that Avarra’s vengeance will strike. Nevertheless he cannot escape it.” She shuddered, her face white with horror. “I thought even Bard had had his warning, when he was driven from the island before,” she whispered. “I don’t hate Bard; he is the father of my son, and yet—and yet—”
She paced the floor, distracted, distressed. “And the penalty for him who rapes a priestess of Avarra… it is terrible! First he has incurred the enmity of the Sisterhood, who are under the protection of the Goddess, and now this.”
Paul watched her, tro
ubled. All his life he had believed that women really wished to be mastered, that in their deepest womanhood they wished to be taken, and if they did not know it, then a man was doing them no harm by showing them what they really wanted. Watching Melisendra, he had no doubt that she was capable of knowing what she wanted, and it was a new and rather disturbing idea to him. Yet Bard had taken her against her will… he found he did not want to follow that thought through, or he would find himself ready to kill Bard.
I don’t want to kill Bard, he has somehow become a part of myself…
“But what about the Sisterhood, Melisendra? They go among men; have they any right to display their womanhood and say, yes, I am here, but you can’t touch? I agree that women who stay at home, protected by their men, should never be touched, but these women have forfeited this protection—”
“Do you think all women are alike? I do not know the Sisters of the Sword, although I have spoken now and again with one of them. I know very little of their ways, but if they choose to take up their swords, I do not see why they should not do so in peace—” Realizing what she had said, she giggled. “No, of course I don’t mean that. But they should do so undisturbed; why should an accident of birth deprive them of the right to make war, if they prefer it to sewing cloaks and embroidering cushions and making cheese?”
“Next,” Paul said, smiling at her vehemence, “you will be saying that men should have the right to spend their lives embroidering tablecloths and washing babies’ breechclouts!”
“Do you doubt that some men are more fitted for it than for war?” she demanded. “Even if they wish to put skirts about their knees, and keep at home boiling porridge for dinner! A woman, at least can marry, or be a leronis, or pledge to the Sisterhood and pierce her ears and take up the sword, but God help the man who wishes to be other than a soldier or a plowman or a laranzu! Why should a woman who takes up the sword have to fear rape, if she is defeated? I am a woman—would you see me used so?”
“No,” said Paul, “I would kill any man who tried, and I would not let him die easy; but you are a woman, and they—”
“And they are women too,” she interrupted him angrily. “Men do not think women are unwomanly, or subject them to rape and disasters if they must follow the plow to scratch a living for their orphaned children or herd animals in the wild. The man who rapes a solitary herdwoman or fisher-woman is everywhere scorned as a man who cannot get a woman willing! Why should only swordswomen be subject to this? When you capture a foeman, you take his weapons and force him to ransom them, in the evil old days you could keep him as your servant for a year’s space, but you did not force him to lie down for you!”
“That’s what Bard said,” said Paul. “He said that his men should use them honorably as prisoners of war, and would have them whipped otherwise.”
She said, “Truly? That is the best thing you have ever told me about Bard di Asturien. He may, as he grows older, be changing, becoming more of a man, and less of a wild wolf—”
Paul looked at her sharply. “You don’t really hate him, do you, Melisendra? Even though he raped you—”
“Oh, my dear,” she said, “that was not rape; I was willing enough, though it was true he threw a glamour over me. But I have come to know that many women lie with a man under a glamour, and sometimes they do not even know it. I hope the Goddess Avarra may forgive Bard as readily as I have forgiven him.” She put her arms around him and said, “But why are we talking of him? We are together, and it is not likely that he will disturb us this night.”
“No,” Paul said, “I think Bard will have a great deal else to think of. Between the Lady Carlina and the wrath of Avarra, I do not think he will spare much thought for us.”
Carlina had been crying for a long time; now her sobs had subsided at last, and she lay with tears just slipping down her cheeks, running out from under the swollen eyelids and soaking into the damp pillow.
“Carlina,” Bard said at last, “I beg you, don’t cry any more. The thing is done. I am sorry I had to hurt you, but now it will be better, and I give you my word I will never lay a rough hand on you again. For the rest of our lives, Carlie, we can live happily together, now that you can no longer refuse me.”
She turned over and stared at him. Her eyes were so swollen with crying that she could hardly see him. She said, in a hoarse little voice, “Do you still believe that?”
“Of course, my beloved, my wife,” he saia, and reached out to take her slender hand in his, but she pulled it away.
“Avarra’s mercy,” he exploded, “why are women so unreasonable?”
She looked up, and a strange small smile played around the corner of her mouth. She said, “You, to call upon the mercy of Avarra? A day will come, Bard, when I think you will not take that oath so lightly. You have forfeited, I think, all claim to her mercy, when you had me taken from the island; and again, last night.”
“Last night—” Bard shrugged. “Avarra is Lady of Birth and Death—and of the hearth fire; surely she could not be angered at a man taking his wife, who had been pledged to him before ever you swore your traitor’s oath to the Goddess. And if she is a Goddess who will come between husband and wife, then I will swear to put down her worship everywhere within this kingdom.”
“The Goddess is the protectress of all women, Bard, and she will punish rape.”
“Do you still claim that you were raped?”
“Yes,” she said implacably.
“I didn’t think you minded too much. Your Goddess knows, you didn’t try to fight me—”
“No,” she said in a low voice, but he heard the unspoken part of that, I was afraid… He had taken her, a second time, and she had not struggled, nor tried to fight him away, but lay quiet and passive, letting him do what he would as if she were a rag doll.
He looked at her with contempt. “No woman has ever complained of me—afterward. You will come to it too, Carlina, with time. Why can you not be honest about your feelings? All women are the same; in your hearts you desire a man who will take you, and master you, and you will one day stop fighting and acknowledge that you wanted me as much as I wanted you. But I had to make you admit it to yourself. You were too proud, Carlie. I had to break through that pride of yours before you could admit that you wanted me.”
She sat up in the bed, reaching for the black cloak of Avarra.
He wrenched it away from her and threw it angrily into a corner. “Never let me see you wearing that damned thing again!”
She shrugged, standing in her torn chemise as straight and proud as if she were wearing court dress. The tears were still flooding down her face with their own life, but she brushed them impatiently away. Her voice was still and cold, even through the hoarseness of many tears. “Do you really believe that, Bard? Or is it your way to protect yourself from knowing what a cruel thing you have done, what a wretched, miserable excuse for a man you really are?”
“I am no different from any other man,” he defended himself, “and you, my dear lady, no different from any other woman, except for your pride. I have even known women to kill themselves before they can admit to the man that their desires are no different from men’s—but I had thought you were more honest than that, that you could admit to yourself, now that I have made it inevitable, that you had wanted me…”
“That,” she said, very low, “is a lie, Bard. A lie. And if you believe it, it is only because you do not dare to know what you are or what you have done.”
He shrugged. “At least I know women. I have known enough of them since my fourteenth year.”
She shook her head.
“You have never known anything about any woman, Bard. You have known only what you yourself wished to believe about them, and that is a very long way from the truth.”
“And what is the truth?” His voice held scathing contempt.
“You ask me,” she said, “but you do not dare to know, do you? Have you ever even thought of trying to find out the truth—the real truth,
Bard, not the soothing lies men tell themselves so that they can live with what they are and the things they do?”
“Do you suggest I ask a woman, and listen to the lies they tell themselves! I tell you, all of them—yes, and you too, lady—they want to be mastered, to have their pride overcome, so that they can admit to their real desires…”
She smiled, just a little. She said, “If you believe that, then, Bard, you will have no hesitation in knowing the real truth, mind to mind, so that neither can lie to the other.”
“I did not know you were a leronis,” Bard said, “but I am sure enough of myself, lady, that if you have courage to show me your inner mind I do not fear what I will see.”
Carlina touched her throat, where the starstone hung within its small leather pouch on a braided leather thong. She said, “Be it so, Bard. And Avarra have mercy on you; for I shall have no more pity than you had on me last night Know, then, what I am—and what you are.”
She unwrapped the stone, and Bard felt a faint sickness at the blueness, the little ribbons of light that curled inside.
“See,” she said in a low voice. “See from inside, if you will.”
For a moment nothing except distance, strangeness, and then Bard knew he was seeing himself, in memory, as Carlina had seen him when he first came to court as their foster brother; big, loutish, a clumsy boy who could not dance, overgrown, stumbling over his own feet… Did she pity me, then? No more than pity? No, he saw himself in her eyes, handsome, frightening, even a little glamorous, the big boy who fetched down her kitten from the tree—and suddenly, when she was most grateful, threatened to wring its neck, so that her gratitude was swallowed up in sudden fear, if he would do that to a kitten, what would he do to me? To Carlina, Bard knew, he had seemed huge, terrifying, big as the world, and when they were to be handfasted, and she had first thought of Bard as a possible husband, he felt, with her, the terrifying revulsion, big arms that would crush her, rough hands touching her, the kiss he had given her there before all, shamed and shrinking; and her anger at him when she had held Lisarda weeping in her arms, the girl not even knowing what Bard had done or why, only that she had been used, shamed, humiliated, and that she could not resist him, even through her hate and sickness at what had been done to her body and how he had made her compliant in her own rape…
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